


Letters from Silberer

by bjobjo, Fishwrites



Category: Inception (2010), James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception, Betrayal, Borderline Personality Disorder, Hurt/Comfort, Limbo, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Military, Military Backstory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Inception, Protectiveness, Psychological Warfare, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:06:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3110579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjobjo/pseuds/bjobjo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fishwrites/pseuds/Fishwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-MI6 Bond was a test subject for Project Somnacin, and one of the few agents who could maintain a stable dream. Even after the Project was discontinued, MI6 has 007 running a particular brand of interrogation: trial and error. Because when you die in a dream, you just wake up.</p><p>But Silva refuses to crack. And with the clock ticking, they must think of more creative ways find out what he’s done with the list. M wants an extraction. James believes it to be academic theory only. Q is an extremely quick study.</p><p>Events of Skyfall in an universe where PASIV dream sharing tech exists. <i>(explores military side of dream-sharing, and how 'extractions' as we know it was actually conceived in practice. Knowledge of Inception unnecessary.)</i> - Illustrated by Bjodoodles</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letters from Silberer

**Author's Note:**

> Most Inception stories explore dream sharing from an academic perspective, with the 'pioneers'. This fic tears apart the nitty gritty of dream sharing in practice, and I kinda wanted to highlight how heaps of the concepts we take for granted are really quite a mental leap. ALSO i refuse to believe the military just left lucid dreaming alone. No fucking way.
> 
> This fic is essentially set a year after the project was discontinued. ~~after Eames stole one of the PASIV prototypes.~~
> 
> For those who want to get straight to the lucid dreaming, you can skip turkey/aftermath scenes if you want. There are variations to canon but it's very subtle and you can skip haha <3

_“The more a man dreams,  
_ _the less he believes”_

– H.L Mencken

:i:

 

Perhaps years (and years, and years) ago, James would have scoffed at the very idea. But he had become a creature of habit in the intervening time; had let the comfort of routine settle slow and unobtrusive into his bones.  

The house had acquired a sea view (though it might have always possessed one): it sat three quarters of the way up a hill that ended with a sweeping lip of the cliff, chalk white against the grey of the sand. Every morning, James woke at six; after the sun had just enough time to stain the wooden house amber. He would get dressed into comfortable shoes, a warm jersey for the wind and sometimes a coat. Then he would go for a walk along the edge of the cliff, letting the wind score his skin dry, down the hill and all the way to road at the bottom. He would climb the hill again, along the gravel footpath up to the house. It would take less than an hour, but he would be slightly out of breath. Sometimes, just before autumn flickered into winter, he would take his cane with him to help with the ache in his left knee.

(Most days, he thought he was perfectly content, and other times he felt like the house itself, slightly hollow, perched on a cliff. Waiting for something.)

After his walk, James would have a hot shower and change into clean clothes. His shoes he would leave by the door, a little muddy, a lot scuffed. He would have breakfast with Vesper, jars of fruit preserves sitting on the kitchen bench, labelled by hand: _strawberry, marmalade, kiwifruit, Venetian clementine._ Once they done eating, she’d give him a kiss on the cheek, he would wash the plates and mugs. They would go to the living room where she’d pick up a novel she had abandoned and James would clean his gun.

If the weather were fair, they would open the French windows and fight over the gramophone.

After lunch, they would take coffee outside and soak in the scent of it while waiting for the ships come in to the harbour. Once a week, he’d take the car into the city, pick up books, groceries and bullets for his gun. He used to visit the gallery every other Tuesday, but had stopped recently because his shoulder was hurting more than it used to – and driving the long hour into the city had become arduous.

James only realised how attached he had become to his routine when The Boy arrived, and upended it.

It started one blustery spring afternoon – the clouds had gathered thick just beyond the cliffs and he was just in the process of shuttering the upstairs windows against the imminent rain when the doorbell rang. He paused, one hand on the latch, and frowned.

No one ever came out this way; and certainly not up to the house. Checking the gun at his hip, he made his way carefully down the stairs. Even with his bad leg, he could be silent. Then Vesper, calling up through the hallway:

“Darling,” she said, “There’s someone here to see you!”

“Tell them I’ve died,” James called back.

He took a sharp turn through the door to the living room in order to avoid the front hall. He could hear laughter through the walls, and Vesper saying, _not even an umbrella, you’ll be drenched by the time you got back to town._

Ignoring the approaching footsteps, James sat down in his favourite chair, and held his gun very pointedly across his knee when Vesper appeared in the door-way. She was accompanied by a thin young man with glasses and a head of dark hair that looked as if it had fought a battle against the sea wind, and lost. He was wearing a lumpy jacket over a suit jacket; neither of which were well fitted. He was staring at James with unfeigned shock, eyes wide and dark.

The ticking of the grandfather clock stuttered in its brass housing; came to a halt.

Vesper paused, glancing between the two of them.

“We were just about to have coffee,” she said, smiling at the boy, “Would you like some?”

 “No, he takes tea,” said James, automatically – then hesitated.

_How could he have possibly known?_

“I don’t mind,” the boy was saying, giving Vesper a serene sort of smile. His voice made James tighten his fingers over the gun in his hand. “Tea would be lovely, but coffee is good too.”

“I think James might have some Earl Grey squirreled away somewhere,” said Vesper, stepping into the living room and putting James’ coffee mug down next to his elbow. She set hers down on the table proper, then dropped a kiss into his hair. “God knows why.”

She made her way back to the door and gave the boy a little push in the direction of the couch.

“Well sit down,” she said, smiling, “I’ll look for the tea.”

“You really don’t need to – “

“Oh please,” she said, “We never get any visitors; James is an incorrigible shut in.”

At this, the boy laughed, eyes scrunching up.

“Is he really?” he asked.

Vesper gave him a soft look, the kind she reserved for particularly mischievous sea birds, before sweeping out of the room and down the hall, leaving the both of them there: James with his gun and the boy with his smile.

He sat down next to James, tucked in close.

“You make a good looking old man, Mr. Bond,” said the boy.

 

:i:

 

 

 

> _Turkey.  
>  Four months ago._

The problem with death is that it lost its romance with every successive experience.

The _thought_ of it loses the solid slash of colour that seizes ones’ throat, throwing seconds into bright relief. It’s like each bullet wound leaves a leak, trickling, innocuous, until each death is less saturated than the last.

He and Patrice are locked in stalemate, arms twisting around each other’s throats like vipers who couldn’t get the upper hand. His shoulder hurts, hot and slick with blood.

If James were any other kind of man, he would have kept a tally. He knew a Stateside soldier back in the Project who had done so, neat handwriting in identical black Moleskine notebooks: shrapnel to the face, strangulation, knife wound, bullet to the head.

_“Take the bloody shot.”_

She does.

And although James had always been the sort of man to have both feet firmly planted in reality, his first thought when falling backwards off that train was: _that’s the kick._ But he was still falling, gravity sucking the air from his lungs in a rush of shock and sudden silence.

When he hit the water, he thought, _fuck,_ because drowning was a bitch but at least he would wake up soon. He blames the moment of weakness, the gap between one word and the next, between air and water: he thinks of Vesper, her pale face and her dark hair, billowing like the red dress she died in.

_He would wake up soon._

 

:i:

 

 

 

> _MI6, London.  
>  Three months later._

Of course, James did wake up, in one sense of the phrase if not the other.

The shrapnel in his shoulder and the bullet scar across his chest was a reminder that, if James had been dreaming in that river, then he still was.

 “…and now that they have accessed M’s codes, it’s only a matter of time before they decrypt the list.”

Everything ached. It was as if he had lost ten years between the bridge and the water, and it took everything he had to undergo each physical exam with a blank face, pretending that his muscles weren’t screaming at him to stop. It took discipline he didn’t know he had, not to gasp for breath; to measure each inhale and exhale to the tiny line on the monitor, in the hopes that his heart beat would do the same: _beep beep beep beep._

Tanner was an almost constant presence.

“General feeling is that it’s someone from her past. Back when she was running things in Hong Kong. She’s no idea what it all means.”

James paused, expression flat.

“And you believe that?”

Tanner only shrugged; conceding. Out of the corner of his eyes, James saw one of the physicians writing something on his clipboard.

He stared at his own hands in the mirror when he dug out the pieces of metal from his shoulder, concentrating on the pain. It buzzed in his ears as he dug the knife deeper, like the sound from a tuning fork struck hard. It certainly felt real enough, and smelt real enough – coppery and cloying even as he ran his palm beneath the cold tap.

“For her eyes only,” he said.

Because even though M had traded him in for chance, it wasn’t as if anyone else in James’ life would have done any different. (“ _We both know the rules of the game. We’ve been playing it long enough.”_ ) He had been reduced to a set of skills, balanced on a scale of risks, death and results. It seemed that loyalty, unlike trust or love, was less easy to dilute.

 

True to her word, everything in James’ London flat had been put into storage: neat heavy boxes with printed labelling, covered furniture and wrapped cases. He did not have many sentimental affects, but what he have, he left in their boxes. He took with him only his suits. He had a feeling he would be needing his armour. Perhaps he would wear black, for his own belated funeral.

He lay in his hotel bed for a long time, stripped down to his pants on top of the covers. The air was so still he could have suffocated beneath it.

James breathed in the anonymous scent of the pillow, and closed his eyes.

He could see the news footage on the back of his eyelid like the inverse of a photo negative; the fire of the explosion and felt the cold dread in the bottom of his stomach like an echo of a nightmare. The thought of the coffins lined with red blue and white, and wondered if they had done that for him, three months ago. Now that he was back in England, it didn’t feel quite so long.

But James knew first hand how fickle time was.

He turned on the bed to lean on his good shoulder, tugging the duvet over his hip. The sheets were cool, where he had not moved, and he didn’t know what to make of the emptiness. Instead he let the exhaustion soak into his skin, the veins in his hands and his hollow bones.

 

“I just have one question. Why not stay dead?”

It had been a while since James had been in the same room as Gareth Mallory: they had not been operating in the same circles, after all, even when before the Project was disbanded. He stood there now, in a bureaucrat’s suit, wearing a bureaucrat’s skin, hand tucked into his pockets. He wasn’t taller than Bond, but managed to look down his nose very literally, regardless.

“Hire me or fire me,” said James, because he didn’t come back from the dead to deal with this bullshit. M looked as if she very much agreed.

“If he says he’s ready, he’s ready.”

Mallory turned to her.

“Perhaps you can’t see it. Or maybe you won’t.”

“And what exactly are you implying?”

“You’re sentimental about him.”

They held each other’s gaze for an elongated moment, tension like a violin string pulled tight.

“On the contrary, double-oh seven possesses a very specific skill which I think will be invaluable in this entire mess,” said M. “I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate, to you of all people.”

“Project Somnacin was discontinued for a reason,” said Mallory, brows rising.

“And until double-oh seven has been discontinued,” M replied, “Waste not, want not.”

“Let’s reserve that for after the fact, shall we?” said Mallory. He turned, dismissive, and made towards the door. He paused as he drew level with James.

“Good luck,” he said, voice dry and eyes just as unimpressed, “Don’t cock it up.”

 

James looked from the glass door back to M, then surveyed Tanner who was tapping a nervous rhythm against the edge of his laptop.

“I don’t see why we need to complicate things,” said James.

“I’ll be the judge of that. Tanner, get Bond up to speed, would you?”

Tanner nodded and gestured James over to his screen.

“We’ve analysed the shrapnel fragments. It’s a depleted uranium shell, hard to get, extremely expensive – only used by a select few.” He swiped to the next window, to display three headshots in varying degrees of quality. “Recognise anyone?”

Hard to forget a man who was trying to throw you off a train. He tapped the screen.

“Hmm,” said Tanner, “Name’s Patrice. The Americans want him for the Yemanian ambassador’s murder. Intel is that he’ll be in Shanghai in two days. Probably on a job.”

M had stood up, her back against the glass.

“You’re to go there and await further instructions. If he turns up, I want an extraction. Find out who he works for and who has the list – then terminate him for Ronson.”

“I can do all of that top side,” said James, “There’s no need to risk the PASIV in the field.”

“It’s only a matter of time before they decrypt the files,” said Tanner again, looking from the screen to M.

“That’s right. Your primary concern is to find out who is behind this. So we can stop them before anything else explodes,” said M. “Patrice is the only solid lead we have. We can’t afford to have him…expire, without the relevant information. So you are to extract, first and foremost. Can you do this or not?”

James didn’t particularly like dreaming. Too many uncontrollable variables. He thought of that handwritten list again ( _strangulation, drowning, crushed to death, electrocution, partial dismemberment_ ) and the slippery wetness that came with trying to keep your intestines where they belonged – namely, inside.

“I might be out of practice,” he said.

You didn’t forget that sort of thing, no matter how many years it had been.

“Have a test run before you go,” said M, steadily, “You can use one of the secure rooms here. Report first to the new Quartermaster for your documentation. He hasn’t set up shop yet, but Tanner will put you two together.”

 

:i:

 

 

 

> _The National Gallery, Trafalgar, London._

“Always made me a little melancholy.”

The boy – because that’s what he is, whippet thin and looking like a university student – carried himself with a calm assurance that slunk at his heels, little puddles of shadow from the lights overhead; blink and you missed it. He blended in so well that James been about to leave, caught between softly pronounced vowels and a too deliberate metaphor. He was so _young._

His casual disdain was like a breath of fresh air, and, unbidden, reminded James of Vesper.

The boy tilted his head, a quick movement, birdlike.

“Sometimes, a trigger has to be pulled.”

“Or not pulled. It’s hard to know in your pyjamas – ”

For that, he gets a very small smile.

“ – _Q._ ”

“Double-oh seven. Your tickets to Shanghai,” said Q, passing over an envelope. “And passports.” His nails were clean and unbitten, but his lips bore the opposite signs.

“And this,” said Q, handing over a heavy black case. James flicked it ajar briefly, noting two guns and a silver chip sitting in its foam bed. He tapped an index finger against the chip.

“This?”

Q’s hands were very still, even when he moved. It was like watching one of the paintings.

“Transmitter. Broadcasts your location – distress signal. The gun is a Walther PPK 9 millimetre – micro-dermal sensor in the grip. Coded to your palm print so only you can fire it. Less of a random killing machine and more of a personal statement. The other merely fires a sedative. I understand that people are wanted alive at some stage, so perhaps I should withhold the Walther.”

James smiled properly then, with his teeth.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “Being alive is a very temporary phase. The gun will not be neglected.”

“Knowing your track record,” said Q, “That is the last thing I’d be worried about.”

“Whereas you don’t seem to have a track record at all,” said James.

Q’s lips twitched upwards. James wondered if he should start keeping a tally.

“In my field, that is quite the compliment,” said Q.

“So that’s it,” said James, hefting the black case, “Gun, radio, sedative.”

Q raised one eyebrow.

“Not exactly Christmas, is it?”

And there it was, the snark barely veiled behind polite consonants.

“Were you expecting an exploding pen? I’m afraid we don’t go in for that sort of thing anymore.”

They surveyed at each other in lieu of a handshake, eyes appraising. James felt like he was being sized up, measured and had been found wanting. After a moment’s pause, Q stood, frumpy parka and all, hands in pockets, casual as you please.

“Good luck out there in the field,” said Q, “And do try to bring the equipment back in one piece.”

And somewhere between the Gainsborough and the Reynolds, he was gone.

 

:i:

 

 

 

> _Shanghai, present day._

The wind was not quiet here; it screamed and bit them, making James’ gloves slippery and Patrice heavy with fear. Twenty floors down, something flashed a dull orange-red glow. Fire. He wouldn’t have all that long, and his arm was beginning to ache, shaking in its socket like a tether coming loose.

Patrice’s face was a mask of desperation, mouth agape.

“ _Who’s got the list?_ ” James shouted.

Patrice jerked in his hand, body dropping an arms-length down in a sickening lurch. James held on, gritting his teeth against the pain. The sound of gunfire and shouts. They were not speaking in Chinese.

 “Tell me! Who are you working for?”

Patrice shook his head, hand slipping another inch. James could feel the dig of fingernails scratching against the leather of his gloves before Patrice fell with a cry, the sound echoing up against the shattered glass. He screamed for a few long seconds as he fell. There was an answering rumble in the steel foundations, and the building began to tremble.

James thumped the side of the wall in frustration.

“Fuck,” he said.

Then he threw himself off the building after Patrice.

 

 

“Well that didn’t take long at all, did it,” said James, jerking awake. Beside him, cuffed and bound, Patrice groaned, disoriented from the extra dose of Somnacin. It was par the course, the sedative keeping the mark under for longer. Kept their muscles lax and their reactions slow. It gave James time to recalibrate the PASIV if he had to.

Or kill them.

Another two minutes would do. James was getting sick of jumping off high-rises.

“Third time lucky?” he said, and depressed the plunger.

 

This time, he didn’t bother with recreating the towering office building. He dreamt up a concrete cell with a skeleton chair bolted to the floor, knives, thin wire and a gun. The air was sterile, still as a morgue. He would be finished before the projections got here, at any rate.

Picking up a thin, sharp blade from the tray on the ground next to them, James held it up in front of Patrice, turning the knife so it caught the light from the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The cell seem to shudder under the weight of awareness as Patrice looked from the blade, to Bond, then back again.

“I know I’m dreaming,” said Patrice. His voice was steady, despite the way his pulse thrummed beneath his jaw.

James thought back to the naked fear in Patrice’s face while he hung over the lip of the building. There was a very big difference between knowing you were in a dream, and believing it.

“My projections will rip you apart before you ever find the safe,” said Patrice.

James cocked an eyebrow and pressed the knife to the side of one eyelid. He dug the tip in, drawing blood.

“Who said I was looking for a safe?”

“They – “

James flicked the knife, gripping it before plunging the tip straight through Patrice’s hand. The man screamed, jerking backwards in his chair, against the cuffs on his wrist. His hand made a wet sound as the blade slid, the back of his hand catching against the hilt.

They thought James an old fashioned man. And they would be right.

“Now let’s try this again,” said James, twisting the knife like the second-hand of a lock: degree by degree, _tick, tick, tick._ “Who has the list? Who are you working for?”

When Patrice didn’t answer, James wrenched the blade out from the flesh of the hand and pressed it, bloodied and dripping, against the man’s eye again.

“Tell me and maybe I won’t skin you from the face down.”

Patrice laughed, shaking and wet.

“But it’s just a dream,” he said, “You kill me, I’ll just wake up!”

“Ah,” said James, smiling, “See. That’s the _best_ part.”

 

:i:

 

  
“007, report.”

“I’ve got a name, contact and location. Raoul Silva. Severine. Macau. In that order. How’s that for efficiency?”

“And Patrice?”

“Dead. Give my regards to Mallory.”

 

:i:

 

 

 

> _MI6, London.  
>  Two hours later._

Trust was a strange thing.

It was rarely rational, but the shape of it could be sketched out in the hesitation of a hand; the ones who called him ‘Q’ and the ones who called him ‘Sir.’ It was sketched out in the trackers embedded in his arm and in his thigh, the discreet cars that follow across the street corner and the shadow at his heels. The shades of it were painted each time he proved his worth (and he thought, in the beginning, if he proved it enough, it would be alright). Later, he would realise the consequences of being indispensible, but he thought he could taste the doubt, even now. They trusted him because they had to; and in turn Q gave them weapons that would not (could not) betray them. And he trusted them to keep him safe from others, but not from themselves.

Trust was a thing painstakingly outlined in the insurance that Q hoarded, quiet at the edges of the system, pilfered away like fresh water in a desert. Because once upon a time, MI6 had saved Q’s life – and now it had come to collect.

There was always a price; trust was the smile it wore.

It was in the shape of metaphorical and literal gun that said: _here is a choice, please make the right one_. And it was in the charred remains of Vauxhall, burnt out and acidic, dripping with betrayal. Q didn’t believe in karma, but there had been something poetic about the way those choices had planned out.

Because in the end, they hadn’t had much of a choice either.

And here he was, whittled down to a single letter.

 

 

It was nearly 2am when they released the first five names.

Q was still at Q-branch, M’s compromised computer laid out on his work-bench along side his own. He had made remarkably little progress over the last few days, and his frustration had a direct inverse relationship with how much sleep he accrued. On the main monitor, Bond was a small red dot. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, and was debating whether he should drain the rest of his cold tea or dump it make a fresh batch when an alarm flashed on his screen –

Someone was breaking into the system. Into an offsite unit. Q almost dropped his cup in his haste to type in a counter command, suddenly wide awake with adrenaline, because he recognised this _(“Breach. Security breach someone get R!”_ ), it was the same thing that had cannibalised M’s laptop and the internal systems in Vauxhall – old codes that had since been sleeplessly strengthened, it _shouldn’t_ have allowed –

“ _Shit!_ ”

Barely twenty seconds later, Tanner called.

“They’ve released the first five names,” he said, “I’m bringing M in, along with her laptop. It’s been compromised.”

“I know,” said Q, not pausing in his typing, “I caught them – Silva –but couldn’t stop it in time. Taking the video down now, but it won’t make much of a difference. ETA?”

“Five minutes,” said Tanner, and hung up.

Q let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. There was a sick feeling in his stomach; the prickling sensation of failure. He could feel the gaze of the night shift (though these days it seemed that no one went home) on the back of his neck, against the skin of his exposed wrist, scrutinising, watching. Q had inherited his title because he was the best they had, but also because of chaos and a body-count. He felt uncomfortably aware of a clock somewhere, ticking down.

 

Nearly eight minutes later, Q was not only joined by Tanner and M, but Mallory as well. Someone had the good sense to bring him fresh tea, but he was too nervous to touch it.

“What I want to know,” said M, “Is how they got in, again, Quartermaster.”

Q’s skin felt cold and hot all at once.

“They had access to your files, Ma’am,” he said. He wanted to say _because you helped him by manually overriding my failsafe,_ but kept his mouth shut. “The only way to completely flush him out is if I reworked the walls from the ground up but I haven’t had – “

Mallory held up a hand and Q fell silent.

“We’re pulling the agents out, but it may be too late for that. Have you had a chance to verify Double-oh Seven’s intel?”

Q nodded, bringing the map to the front of the screen.

“He was right about the location at least. Whoever Silva is, they didn’t bother bouncing the signal through their last algorithm. I traced it back to an island just off the coast. I’ve been tracking his distress signal for the last hour and he’s getting close.”

“Can he shut it down on site?” said M.

“Perhaps,” said Q, “But that might not make a difference. They could have the list scattered anywhere by now, have it automatically released on a whim. Destroying the original copy is irrelevant.”

“Lovely,” said Mallory, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Beside him, Tanner was twisting his wedding ring on his finger, round and round, as his eyes flickered from Mallory to M and back again.

“I want retrieval on stand by,” said M at last, “The only way we will get any answer is from the horses’ mouth.”

“Providing this Silva is actually there and 007 manages _not_ to kill him. I’m sure his track record does not need reiterating here.”

M’s expression could have burned a hole right through Q’s desk. She didn’t deign to reply, instead turning to the monitor in front of them.

“Bond needs to know the names are out,” she said. Then glanced very deliberately at her laptop, “Can you contact him securely?”

“Oh, there’s no need,” said Mallory, “I’ve sent someone.”

He smiled thinly at M.

“I thought time was of the essence. Maybe we can get this wrapped up before the hearing next week. Now if you’ll forgive me, I must inform the PM.”

With that, he strode out of Q branch.

M’s face was bone white with rage; expressionless. Her words, when she spoke, was just as calm.

“Are our systems secure now, Quartermaster?”

“I’ve taken all external units offline,” he said.

“I don’t have to tell you the consequences of another breach like this,” she said.

 _Gun, trigger, trust_ , thought Q.

“No Ma’am.”

 

:i:

 

 

 

> _20 thousand feet over Qiannan, China._  
>  18 hours later.

They had been flying for just over half an hour. Raoul Silva was secured in his chair, unconscious, and the only other person in the compartment with James was Moneypenny. She wasn’t wearing her dress anymore, but the bland uniform of the MI6 retrieval team, shoulder holster and gun strapped to her leg.

She was also holding the PASIV, which she placed on the table between them with a heavy thud.

“I dare say you’d like some sleep, after all that,” she said, lengthening the cuff that tethered her to the silver case.

“Not the kind you have in mind,” said James, eyeing the PASIV warily. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out. “And I wouldn’t have thought you’d have the clearance.”

Moneypenny – Eve – shrugged minutely.

“Mallory thought it appropriate to brief me,” she said.

James snorted.

“Of course he did. And I suppose Mallory wants me to take Silva under?”

Moneypenny leaned back in her chair, mirroring him.

“Yes, he does.”

James took a long drink from the glass of water at his elbow, in lieu of replying. Beside him, Silva breathed like a metronome. Reflexively, he checked both exits, and the silhouette of the guns there.

“How unfortunate that I don’t take orders from Mallory,” he said, setting his glass down.

“That’s good because the orders came from M,” said Eve smoothly. She passed over her phone, open to a photo album on the screen. “Thanks to your successful extraction in Shanghai, we’re moving a lot faster than expected. But even so, two of the five agents have already been killed.”

James swiped his thumb over the screen. The two men stared at him, empty. He wondered briefly if he had looked like that, four months ago – a corpse on a screen.

“We don’t have time,” she said, quiet. “M wants to know exactly what is going to happen to the rest of those names, what he’s got planned.

James handed the phone back to her, looking over at the PASIV and the blank timer. _But now they only eat rat,_ he thought, bile at the back of his throat ( _you have changed their nature)_. He didn’t want to see what Raoul Silva’s mind was like; the colour of expensive scotch and Severine’s blood in the dust.

“Time. That’s what that’s for,” he said, shrugging off his suit jacket and undoing his cufflinks. Rolling up his left sleeve to the elbow, he reached over and did the same to Silva’s jumpsuit sleeve. He would have to guesstimate the dose again. He grinned at what those academics back in the Project would have thought, scientists with their precise calculations. Turning the PASIV to face him, he slid the half empty vail of Somnacin from its housing and measured out a dose.

Eve was watching with undiluted curiosity as James pulled out two lines, and inserted one of the IVs into Silva’s forearm, strapping it down before doing the same for himself.

“If he wakes first, keep him under,” said James, tapping the plunger, “I’ll kick myself out. Worse comes to worse, knock him out with your gun.”

“Alright,” said Eve, shifting so that she was closer to Silva, and within hitting distance.

“I’ll be back in ten minutes,” said James, setting the timer on the PASIV.

“Ten _minutes?_ ” asked Eve, raising an eyebrow.

“I thought you said Mallory briefed you,” said James.

“He didn’t have time to run me through the _mechanics_ ,” said Eve.

“And neither do I,” said James, dryly.

He leaned back in his chair, letting his arm rest flat on his own thigh. Beside him, Silva’s eyes didn’t so much as flicker.

“See you soon,” he said, and depressed the plunger.

 

James dreamt them back to the island, the dry grit of it still fresh in his mind. He only remembered the dock, the courtyard and the concrete warehouse, and so that was it. He hoped that the fact it was an island would offer a buffer between them and Silva’s projections, and any projections that were on the island would be contained.

The memory must have been fresh in Silva’s mind as well because they were both in the warehouse, complete with the two rows of blinking, humming servers – the laptops open on the wood-steel tables. Except this time James had firearms and was not tied to a chair.

He shot Silva in the leg as soon as the man stepped out of the elevator.

Silva stumbled with a shout of pain and surprise, and James rushed him in the moment of distraction, dragging him to the chair and unceremoniously dumping him into it, securing his arms and legs to the metal with swift practiced movements.

“What a lovely – “ Silva hissed with pain, but he was still grinning, “- reversal we’ve got here.”

There was the bang of doors against concrete and James barely looked up to shoot the two projections – guards – who came through. They dropped like stone.

“Let’s make this very short,” said James, levelling the gun. It was his new Walther, he realised as the green lights glowed.

Blood stained Silva’s right thigh. Slowly, like elongated time, it dripped onto the floor beneath the chair to form a fast growing puddle.

“The list of agents. Are you going to release all the names?”

Silva was still rolled his neck back and around, as if working out an uncomfortable ache.

“If I have to,” he said with an exaggerated shrug, “If it comes to that.”

James frowned.

“What do you mean?”

When Silva didn’t reply, he took a step closer, gun steady.

“Alright,” he said, “Let me rephrase that. Destroy the list you have, and I won’t transform you into a human sieve.”

At this, Silva laughed uproariously, genuine amusement contorting him. James hit him hard across the face with his gun. Something cracked and shifted beneath the skin, grotesque. But Silva was still laughing; heaving breaths.

“You know,” he said, in between chuckles, “You almost had me. You _almost_ had me there.”

 James tightened his hands on the gun. Something began to rattle, very softly, on the table beside them – like an earthquake tremor.

“Tell me,” he said, voice calm, “How to destroy that list.”

Silva ignored him. He barely seemed aware of his leg wound.

“The problem with building from memory,” he said, eyes alight with amusement, “is that each dream holds the faults of the dreamer. Mmhm?”

“Just answer the question,” said James. He pulled a long knife out of his pocket, “Or we can start with this.”

“You see,” Silva continued, “you’ve got most of it right. The ground, the furniture, the scratches over the window there – you know it’s not too bad. Not a bad effort. But I know my own work. And that monitor over there has been churning out gibberish ever since we sat down.”

James didn’t flinch, but he felt something cold grow in the depths of his lungs. The tremors were louder now, shaking the ground and the glass windows, a growl beneath their skin.

Silva leaned forwards as far as his restraints allowed, eyes manic. He fake whispered; loud enough to carry in the echoes of the vaulted ceiling.

“We’re dreaming,” he said.

James shot him in his left knee.

Silva screamed, doubling over with the pain and the noise of the gun; it was much louder than James expected and he realised that it had been echoed with an explosion somewhere in the distance. Silva was laughing and screaming, a horrible combination between the jerking clang of metal cuffs on the chair.

“Five years,” he was saying, between hissing breaths, “Five years and you think you can do anything to me down here?”

James took hold of the mangled knee and squeezed.

“If you know so much about dreaming,” he said, “Then you know we have all the time in the world. Now, _the list._ ”

“The list, the list, the list,” Silva repeated, face very close. “You’re not seeing the big picture.”

James had had enough. With an impatient movement, he flicked the blade of the knife downwards, pressing from jut of the cheekbone and swiped, taking a deep layer of skin with it. There was shouting; heavy footsteps and James had to duck to avoid being shot. He returned fire, dreaming up another gun and dropping the knife with a clatter when it materialised in his hand.

“They’ll keep coming,” said Silva, grinning through the blood. It was as if he was barely feeling it.

“The only thing I’m in risk of dying from,” said James, sliding the knife between skin and collar bone and watching Silva twitch, “Is sheer boredom. So tell me: what have you done with the list?” he twisted the knife, “where is it?”

It was another ten minutes before the projections broke into the warehouse, but the only answer James got from Silva was laughter. There were too many projections at once, the glass above them exploding inwards. He lost sight of Silva, still tied to the chair, in a chaos of screaming, dead-eyed men and women (where had they all come from?) – but before they could tear into his flesh, someone shot him through the neck.

James felt himself fall, vision tilting sideways, choking.

He thought he saw a red dress. But it might have just been the blood.

 

 

He woke just in time to see Moneypenny jab Silva with sedative. The man groaned, but did not wake, fingers twitching spasmodically before settling.

“ _Bond_ ,” she said, as James clutched at the hollow of his own throat, having jerked out of his seat.

“Are you alright? What happened?”

“Shot,” he said, curtly, willing his heart to slow.

“S _hot?_ ”

“Do keep up,” he said.

Moneypenny handed him another glass of water and James spared her a disgusted look (he needed alcohol. Preferably a lot of it) before downing it in three long gulps. His throat still felt like it was clogged with blood; a heavy lingering taste, thick and all too real.

“Did you find out where he’s keeping the list?” asked Eve, “How to stop the next five from being released?”

James shook his head.

“No. He’s had training. It’ll be harder.”

Eve’s expression didn’t change, but her mouth tightened at the corners, very slightly.

James checked the Somnacin and programmed the timer for twenty minutes. He was glad to see his hands were no longer shaking.

 

 

 

The fifth time they went under, Silva stared at him with a strange mix of pity and contempt, articulated even with half his face caved in. He spat out a tooth and sighed, dramatically. It ended in a gurgling cough, which James ignored.

“Such a waste,” he said, the words blurring at the ends, like fraying rope. “This is wasted on you.”

James pushed him back under the water and watched the body convulse. He counted the seconds, before letting Silva back up.

“The only thing stopping me from cutting our tongue out is the fact you still need to talk,” said James, “But we could always cut it out for a while; resume later.”

Silva laughed.

James was getting sick of hearing the sound.

“No finesse,” he said, looking genuinely disappointed. His gaze didn’t waver. “No _imagination_.”

 

The sixth time, James woke up retching to the phantom sensation of claws on his face, across his hands, beneath his own skin (they had been smothered in rats before James managed to shoot himself in the head).

 

 

After nearly two hours in real time, James plucked the IV from their arms.

“Nothing?” asked Eve, with the calmness of someone who never had to shoot themselves in the head three times in an hour.

“No,” said James. He rewound the IV lines, replaced the nearly empty Somnacin vial and shut down the PASIV.

“Maybe you need to change your approach?” said Eve, “If interro-“

James raised his eyebrows, exhausted.

“With a normal dose of Somnacin, one minute topside is about twenty minutes down there,” he said. His voice felt too loud, too sharp to fit in his own throat. His hands were too clean, and he felt disoriented.

“It’s been nearly two days.”

Eve’s eyes widened.

“I’ve covered most _approaches_ ,” he said, “You can tell M – and Mallory – that it isn’t working.”

James stood up.

“If you’ll excuse me, I really need a drink.”

 

:i:

 

 

 

> _MI6, London.  
>  9 hours later_

When Q slept, he slept like the dead. But he had long since developed a habit of waking to specific sounds, and sometimes, a slamming door. When he was shot through with adrenaline and stress, he slept in ninety minute increments like a mechanical doll, wound up with a great brass key. Even in the temporary shadows of his office, he could feel it digging into his spine, a solid metal thing. Perhaps it was merely the barrel of a gun.

Retrieval arrived sometime just after noon, bringing with them four heavy aluminium cases. The rest of Q branch watched them stomp in past the glass doors, conversations suddenly hushed.

“Silva’s laptop, sir,” said one of the guards, hoisting the smallest case onto the main workbench in front of Q and popping open the lid. Q felt a fission of excitement across the back of his hands, like static.

“Where’s Tanner?” he asked.

“With M and Double-0 Seven in containment cell one,” came Eve’s voice, followed by the click clack of her heels. Q wondered if she possessed the magical power of having clean clothes stashed everywhere because there was no way anyone stepped off a plane looking this put together.

“Miss Moneypenny,” said Q, not turning away from the laptop. He flipped it open carefully, and didn’t look up until Eve was standing right next to him. She waved the guards away and they left, surrendering the tech to R.

“I don’t suppose you have any gear to return to me,” he said.

“Unfortunately no,” said Eve, “A komodo dragon ate Bond’s gun. But I do have the radio.”

She slid the little device across the desk with a sly grin. Q gave her a very flat look.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, pretending to be hard of hearing. He gave an exaggerated tilt of the head. “My gun was eaten by a _what?_ ”

“M wants to know what’s on that laptop,” said Eve, tapping the plastic edge of the computer, “Says it’s your highest priority, _Quartermaster_.”

“Just to be clear,” said Q, tilting his head, “to which M are we referring?”

Eve smiled at him, then swiped his dirty mug from the table.

“Just do what you do best, Q,” she said, “I’ll make you some tea.”

 

There was always something thrilling seeing your own work. Once he was sure there were no ancillary booby traps hiding anywhere, it took Q less than five minutes to disable the fail-safes on Silva’s computer, feeling flushed with pleasure.  One by one, like a trail of perfectly placed dominoes, everything fell into place. It was flattering, really. Q nudged the enter key after only a moment’s hesitation, and let out a satisfied exhale when everything opened up obediently beneath the curve of his index finger.

By the time M and Bond were walking through the door, Stevens had pulled up the omega-site and Q was studiously engaged in an electronic wrestling match with Silva’s polymorphic engine, eyes constantly flickering to the right of the screen. He paused only to make an impatient flicking gesture with his right hand before M or Bond could interrupt his flow. Stevens cleared his throat, nervous as M turned her laser-gaze on him. Double-O Seven detached himself from her side and wandered closer to the main monitor, gazing at the list of ever changing codes; letters switching like scattered tiles.

“Well?” said M, “Anything?”

“We’ve bypassed the fail-safes on Silva’s computer,” said Stevens, “And are manually sweeping every byte of data on it, Ma’am. This – “ he pointed at the revolving fractal on the screen, “is the most encrypted level.”

“It looks like a game of scrabble right now,” said Bond dryly.

Q shot him an unimpressed glare.

“If scrabble chips were rubix cubes and if they happened to be fighting back and expiring every 7th of a second then yes. It is _like a game of scrabble_.”

Bond didn’t reply, but examined the screen closely. After a few minutes of terse silence, he made an aborted movement and Q paused.

“There,” he said, “Go in on that.”

Q pulled TK004 up to the forefront, following the line to –

“Granborough,” said Bond, “Grandborough road. It’s a tube station on the metropolitan line. Been closed for years. Use that as a key.”

And a key it was. A network of red veins unfolded on the screen; blood trickling through expanding lungs.

“Oh look,” said Q, pleased, “It’s a map!”

“Subterranean London.”

It was an extraordinarily detailed map of the entire infrastructure, centring in on where they were at the moment. Q frowned, ease prickling at the back of his neck. He waited. Absolutely nothing else happened.

“And what does this mean, exactly?” M demanded, walking closer to the screen.

Q stared, mind racing.

“At the very least, he knew of the emergency protocols,” he said, and at M’s non-reaction he elaborated, “He knew MI6 would relocate down here, in the event of an emergency or if Vauxhall was compromised. He must know this, that’s why he blew it up in broad daylight. The question is –”

“ – Why did he want us down here in the first place?” Bond finished, hands in pockets.

Q nodded.

“Exactly. Stevens, R. What do you make of this?”

“…so far it seems to be just a map, sir,” said Stevens, who was dividing the map into miniscule quarters and distributing them to the rest of the room, “We’ll comb through it for Easter eggs, but so far...”

“So all we have is a map,” said M.

Q stared at his screen, resisting the urge to bite his lip. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. That it was staring back at him but all he was seeing was his own reflection.

“Such lengths to save a map,” he said, more to himself than anyone else, “What are you hiding, Mr. Silva?”

 

:i:

 

 

 

> _4 hours later._

“Sir,” said Tanner, “M wants to see you.”

Q allowed himself the luxury of squeezing his eyes shut for a full two seconds before turning around. He felt half dead on his feet, and there was a throbbing pain just behind his eyes. It wasn’t nearly as discomforting as the lack of progress though.

“She does know that we haven’t managed to find anything new since the last time she asked, yes?”

“It’s something different. She wants to see you right away.”

“Alright,” said Q, he gestured at R and Stevens who were bent over a shared monitor. He pointed at Silva’s laptop in front of him, “This is going to finish in about three minutes, check it through and start the next one if I’m not back.”

R gave him a mock salute and Q drained his mug before making his way out of the room, up two flights of skeleton-steel stairs and three heavy doors. Before the relocation, Q had only been to M’s office once, in the company of the old Quartermaster. The office had been nothing like the one installed here; bare of any décor except necessary metal chairs and tables, electronics and the same harsh light that lit Q branch below.

The glass doors meant that the room wasn’t completely soundproof, and he could see that M wasn’t alone. 007 as on his feet, looking three shades of pissed off. M just looked unimpressed, but Q had come to realise that it was her default expression when confronted with anything irritating.

Q caught a few words, muffled ( _“– can’t do it. Even if he can learn to keep it stable, there’s no guarantee that – “_ ) before Bond cut himself off at the sharp rap of knuckles on the glass.  Q pushed open the door.

“Ah, Quartermaster. Good. Take a seat. You too, Double-Oh Seven.”

Q took the chair closest to the door, and after a moment, so did Bond, looking thoroughly annoyed. Q ignored him in favour of looking to M in question.

“Did you find anything of use on Silva’s laptop?”

“Nothing we don’t know already,” said Q. He adjusted his glasses for the sake of moving his hands. “We haven’t stopped analysing but – “

M made a gesture with her hand and Q fell silent.

“And the hard-drives?”

“Unrelated data. Silva has been an extremely busy man, but most of it is blackmail material. The laptop was our best bet, but so far, nothing useful. It’s as if he expected it to fall into our hands at some point.”

M raised her eyebrow at Bond.

“You see,” she said, apropos to nothing, “There are not many alternatives left.”

Bond leaned forwards in his chair, threatening.

“I interrogated him for over thirty hours,” he said, “Two days if we include the last twenty minutes. He hasn’t cracked. He’s not a usual mark, he’s one of us – and we’re trained against this. What’s more, Silva is _experienced_. Q won’t last five minutes. And I’m not talking real time.”

“I know you like doing things the traditional way, but I’ve reviewed the reports. Extraction is – “

“ – something they never managed to get off the ground,” Bond interrupted sharply, “The academics could do it but they were civilians. I do things the _traditional way_ because they always work,” said Bond, flatly.

“Well they aren’t bloody well working now, are they?” said M.

Bond had no answer to that, white lipped with frustration.

Frowning, Q raised an eyebrow.

“I seem to be missing something,” he said, glancing from Bond back to M, “Ma’am.”

It was a moment before M turned her gaze to him; staring at Bond. The agent looked exhausted beneath the fluorescent light, the lines on his face outlined in his displeasure. Q was sure he didn’t look much better himself, and his fingers twitched against his thigh.

“Quartermaster,” said M, “What do you know about Project Somnacin?”

 

:i:

 

There was almost no one at the National Gallery this early in the morning. It was peaceful and quiet, a serene bubble in the sprawling mess of London. The Sackler Room itself was utterly empty save for Bond and Q. Even the staff chair next to the door was unoccupied.

They were sitting in front of the Turner again, beneath the glass ceiling and the pale London sunlight.

“You were lying,” said Bond.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be a little more specific,” said Q.

“About Project Somnacin. I find that hard to believe the _Quartermaster_ would be unaware.”

“There hasn’t exactly been spare time for me to be briefed on every military experiment in the last five years. And I’m not actually omniscient,” said Q, “Very close to it, but not quite. Indulge me.”

Bond just continued to stare at him with that shrewd, ‘stop fucking around’ look. Q stared right back. He had heard rumours, he wouldn’t be very good at his job if he didn’t pick up on it – but he hadn’t paid them much attention. It wasn’t really his area.

Until it was, apparently.

Finally, Bond relented.

“Project Somnacin was originally a joint operation. Military researchers. Mostly from the States,” he said, “The original aim was to simulate realistic training environments for soldiers: dreams where you didn’t have to pull your punches or fire blanks. Realistic war zones. Combat training. Terrorist attacks. We could practice eviscerating each-other with all the benefits that comes with actual violence, except death.”

Q leaned forwards, curiosity brimming.

“Because you can’t die in your own mind?”

“When you die in a dream, you just – “ Bond snapped his fingers, the sound sharp as a gunshot in the silence, making Q flinch, “ – wake up. No physical wounds, no permanent damage, no wasted recovery period. You could practice how to break someone’s neck over and over until you get it right.”

                             

Q grimaced. But before he could speak, the door at the end of the room swung open, making both of them look up. It was a group of gallery goers; uni students with satchels and notebooks. Q turned back to Bond.

“M said the project was discontinued. Why? Mental trauma?”

Bond was still looking at the newcomers, hawklike.

“Of a kind,” he said, “People got confused.”

“Confused?” Q repeated.

“You die in a dream. You wake up,” said Bond, “But you go under again, you die, you wakeup, you die, wakeup. Repeat this enough times and people start to lose track. Six shot themselves in the head. One tried to shoot me, after, thought he was doing me a favour. Risk outweighed utility. That and one ours went rogue. Made off with one of the prototype PASIVs. The Americans weren’t very happy after that.”

Q raised both eyebrows.

“Imagine.”

“Yeah,” said Bond.

There were more people in the Sackler Room now; a couple holding hands by the door, whispering. Someone attempted to take a photograph of one of the paintings and was promptly told off by a uniformed staff who materialised like a ghost.

“Hold on,” said Q, “You talk as if these simulations – dreams – are perfectly real. Indistinguishable. How does that work? Is one person in charge of creating all the detail for the simulation for the others or is it a collaborative process?”

“One dreamer,” said Bond with a shrug, “usually one of the researchers. _We_ just concentrated on the running and shooting part.”

“How can they possibly maintain enough detail to fool all of you?” asked Q, “to create an environment realistic enough that one would get so confused as to forget they were in a simulation? Surely it only takes one lapse in concentration and…and…”

Q trailed off.

In its frame, the _Fighting Temeraire_ was no longer where it used to be, sitting to the left of the sunset – it had made its way to the bottom of the frame, so large that the sun had been completely blocked from view by the while wood and sails; the smoke billowing from the paddle-wheel steam tug staining the canvas a dirty grey like an neglected window.

For a moment, Q couldn’t breathe; his pulse ricocheting against his throat and the world narrowing down to a single point of over-saturated focus.

Bond grinned at him, showing teeth.

“I was wondering when you’d notice,” he said.

The floor began to shake, a low hum of thunder that made Q leap to his feet. He couldn’t take his eyes off the painting, but he was aware that everyone in the gallery had frozen to a stand still, and was staring at them with strange, single-minded focus. The girl sitting at the end of the bench had turned, but she wasn’t staring at Q. She was staring at James with undisguised hostility; one hand holding her phone, the other just above her pocket.

“We’re dreaming,” Q breathed. The walls were shaking too now, the paintings shuddering against the wallpaper, the wires taut where they hung. “We’re dreaming. Right now.”

“Steady,” said James, voice pitched low and quiet, “ _Steady._ Don’t panic.”

The girl had not stopped staring – it was eerie, the way she didn’t seem to need to blink. A quick glance at James saw that he was watching her too, shoulders tense. The glass ceiling above them shivered, sunlight fracturing.

Q tried to take deep breaths, but all he could feel was the unnatural trembling of the ground, like an earthquake, or the prelude to an explosion.

“Don’t panic,” Bond repeated, “I’d rather not be torn to pieces by your subconscious. They’ve been very polite so far.”

Q choked.

“My _subconscious_ – ?”

Bond gripped Q’s arm, probably to reassure him, but it was like a trigger had been pulled. The girl came at them with a pair of stainless steel scissors, aiming right for Bond’s neck. Not bothering to let go of Q, Bond pulled his Walther out of nowhere and shot her, point blank, between the eyes. The sound of the gunshot was somehow drowned out by the thump she made when she hit the floor.

“Hey!” cried the staff, running towards them. Someone screamed.

“Jesus _Christ!_ ” Q shouted, trying to wrench his arm free. There was more shouting, people converging on them. Someone grabbed Q’s jacket from behind, hard, “What the hell double-oh sev – “

Q barely had time to flinch, to register the barrel of the gun, before Bond shot him mid-sentence.

 

 

Waking was a violent thing, a sudden flare of bright fluorescent light as he jerked forwards with a yell, gasping for breath. Desperately, Q touched his own forehead with shaking fingers, trying to feel for blood, and exit wound, half expecting the back of his own head to be a mess, blown apart –

It was then he realised there was an IV line trailing from his arm. And a voice, a blurry shape. Tanner.

“ _Sir._ You’re alright,” he was saying, “You’re awake. It was just a dream.”

He took his offered glasses with unsteady hands and tried to calm his heartbeat as the room came into focus. Q felt sick, disoriented. Tanner still had one hand on Q’s shoulder, holding him against the reclining chair he was lying in. M herself was sitting in a chair facing the back of the open PASIV whilst Bond was in the reclining chair next to Q, looking utterly unaffected. In fact, he was smiling.

“You _shot_ me!” were the first words out of Q’s mouth.

“Oh for gods’ sake,” said M.

Q reached to pull the IV from his arm but Bond’s free hand shot out, fingers closing over the strap and holding the IV in place.

“We’re not finished,” said Bond, “And I wouldn’t have had to shoot you if your projection hadn’t tried to kill me with a pair of scissors.”

“You _desecrated_ one of my favourite paintings!” said Q, feeling a little surreal. “Of course she – “

“Bond,” said M, very coldly, “You were meant to be introducing the Quartermaster to dream sharing. Not….provoking his subconscious.”

“I wasn’t _provoking_ ,” said Bond, “If I was trying to provoke, I would have blown something up. I changed a Turner. Didn’t know it would set him right off.”

He turned in his seat the better to look at Q.

“Be grateful I shot you, angry projections aren’t half as nice, no matter whose they are.”

“You said it was my subconscious,” said Q, accepting a glass of water from Tanner, “Why would my subconscious take the form of a random girl I have never seen before?”

“You have seen her before. But it wasn’t just her,” said Bond, finally letting go of Q’s wrist. “Everyone you saw down there was part of your subconscious. Your projections. I was the dreamer, so they attacked me first.”

“You’re saying my subconscious wants to kill you,” said Q, slowly, “That’s not very conducive to a working relationship in dream sharing.”

Bond let out an impatient breath. He looked at M.

“I’m not a bloody professor,” he said, “We don’t have time to teach him from scratch.”

A fission of irritation. Q glared at him.

“I’m an extremely quick study,” he said, “When not being shot in the head.”

M nodded at the PASIV.

“Make time,” she said, shortly.

“I’ll fetch some pain meds,” said Tanner.

 

 

They were in one of the London Eye capsules, Bond having apparently paid for a private one so they could talk in private. It was drizzling with rain, and the entire sky was a monotone grey. The view was still brilliant though, even though most of the buildings disappeared into the fog and rain just past Saint Pauls’ dome.

“Is this to isolate my…projections?” said Q, laying a hand on the rail and looking down through the glass.

“I thought I better keep them away until you get used to dreaming,” said Bond, examining his Walther.

“Is that an automatic response to dream sharing then? Metal reflex?” asked Q, eyeing the people in the next capsule over. They seemed calm enough, talking and laughing, taking pictures with colourful compact cameras and their phones.

“Yes,” said Bond, “Once your subconscious realised that you were dreaming – in someone elses’ dream – they started looking for the intruder. The dreamer. Me. Because if I’m the dreamer, I’m in control of most of the dream. I could hurt you, and so your projections will try to remove me from the dream as fast as possible.”

“By killing you,” said Q, the behaviour of the girl in the Sackler Room suddenly making sense, “But why attack _me_?”

“Well,” said Bond, “That really depends on the relationship you have with your subconscious.”

He smirked at Q’s incredulous stare.

“Projections don’t usually attack the subject – that’s you – but it’s different for everyone. I knew a guy who got pull out because his projections would shoot him out of the dream every time things got hot. Sniper rifle.”

Q glanced at their neighbours again. So far, no firearms. The ground was falling slowly further away, the cars and people becoming small miniatures lining the Thames. He took off his parka and sat down on one of the benches.

“That seems like self defence to me,” said Q, “To wake him up as quickly as possible. Is dying the only way to get out of a dream?”

“Falling also works,” said Bond, “A sharp tipping sensation usually. But a bullet to the head is much more efficient.”

Q let out a breath, unsure whether it was a laugh or not.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Trust me,” said James, “when you’ve been impaled on a girder or being buried by an explosion, you’ll want a quick way out. Though I’m sure neither scenario is familiar to Q branch tech.”

Q merely blinked at him, dismissive. Then a fragment of earlier conversation slotted into place.

“When you said that you had been interrogating Silva,” Q started.

“He was the subject,” said Bond, “Did it on the flight over.”

Q stared out of the window, thinking hard.

“Interrogation. Without the worry of pushing to hard and killing the subject. Because they would just wake up.”

Bond nodded.

“You’re quick,” he said, dryly.

Q didn’t dignify that with an answer, mind still whirring with the possibilities.

“Why interrogate him though? Why not interrogate the projections instead?” he asked, pressing a hand to the cool glass. It felt real. It even had fingerprint stains from nameless, faceless tourists, and scuffed scratches near the handles. The way the glass warmed beneath his skin felt – Q couldn’t tell the difference. Across the river, Big Ben’s hour hand switched over and started to chime.

He turned back to face Double-Oh Seven, who was watching him with an unreadable expression.

“If the subject is a projection of his own consciousness, then surely interrogating the manifestation of his subconscious would…” Q waved his hand, searching for the idea, “…they would be more malleable?”

“But there’s too many of them,” said Bond, “Which one do you go after?”

Q shrugged.

“Does it matter? Do projections have significance? A friend. Confidant. Family. Someone who represents a person they trust.”

Bond tilted his head.

“Maybe,” he said, “Except finding projection is almost impossible. If the mark projects them in the first place. Unpredictable – and you’ll probably be shred to pieces by the other projections if you start asking around too much. Providing the subject himself doesn’t find you first and start a panic.”

“And that’s why you only…talk to the mark.”

“For a given value of ‘talk’,” said Bond. The smile on his face wasn’t a pleasant one, “If M’s sending me out with the PASIV, it’s not for anything that could be done topside.”

Q felt his stomach twist. He wasn’t naïve about the nature of field-work, by any means – but there was something incredibly unsettling of death not being a possible reprieve. He wondered what it did to the subjects. He wondered what it did to Bond.

“Where do I fit into all this?” said Q.

 “Pain isn’t a sufficient incentive for Silva,” said Bond, getting up and leaning on one of the rails. The rain had dotted the glass, blurring London beyond. “She wants us to extract the information in a different way.”

“By talking to the projections?”

“No,” said Bond. He leaned back against the glass, framed by Parliament House and Westminster bridge. “They tried this, when the Project was still running. A way to extract information from the subject without having to torture them at all.”

“Or when torture doesn’t work,” murmured Q. They were almost at the top of the Ferris wheel now.

“The theory is,” and by Bond’s voice Q knew he didn’t believe it to be much more than a theory, “projections aren’t the only things the subject brings into the dream. If you create something that the mind sees as a secure place –a bank, a prison, a safe – the subject will subconsciously fill it with their secrets.”

“Then you break in and steal them,” said Q, delighted, “And if you’re the dreamer that shouldn’t be difficult. Would you be able to control the safes? Set the combinations.”

Bond shrugged.

“Maybe.”

Q furrowed his brow.

“You haven’t tried this before? It sounds a lot more pleasant than torture. Potentially more accurate too. Surely one cannot lie _subconsciously_.”

“It’s too hard with one dreamer,” said Bond, looking vaguely put out at Q’s enthusiasm, “Back on base, the researchers said they could do it to each other, but they were acquainted. Knew where to look. Trusted each other. Very different when they tried it on us. And by that stage we were all aware of dream sharing and it was very difficult to get past our projections. We never perfected extraction – and the project got disbanded soon after.”

“But M thinks it’s possible,” Q insisted, leaning forwards.

Bond snorted with derision.

“The only time M used a PASIV was to make her subconscious sufficiently paranoid to repel unauthorised dreamers,” he said, “The reports say it’s possible, so she thinks so.”

Q ran his thumb over his mouth, thinking hard.

“From what we know of Silva, how he works – his secrets would be locked up digitally. Stands to reason that this would carry over into his subconscious. He’d trust his own codes over a physical safe.”

Q looked up, heart racing with the realisation.

“And that’s why you need _me_. You wouldn’t be able to extract from him in a dream if the information is on a laptop somewhere, only I would be able access those secrets.”

Bond’s top lip curled, showing a flash of teeth. He inclined his head; a concession.

“You’re confident you could hack his computer, then? Because this whole thing will be pointless if you can’t.”

Q leaned back against the glass, pleased.

“Oh ye of little faith. I’ve already done it, remember?” he said, thinking back to the map.

They were on the other side of the Ferris wheel now, slowly curving in the last quarter of descent. Q could see the streets spread out from Southbank, familiar landmarks complete with his projections going about their business. _What would it be like to literally talk to your subconscious?_ He thought, _fascinating_.

It had stopped raining.

“I still don’t understand why you haven’t used this method before,” said Q, “surely most people would find a titanium safe secure enough to project their secrets. You could just dream one up, then open it.”

“Too many variables,” said Bond, “Everyone would have their own version of a safe, you need to know their background, their habits. You need to know what make them tick.”

Q pondered this.

“If I didn’t trust banks, then my secrets wouldn’t be in a bank safe.”

“Exactly. The ‘safe’ could be anywhere, the combination could be anything. Most importantly there would be countless projections between you and that safe. In my experience, pain is more efficient.”

“But not for someone with Double-O resistance to interrogation training,” Q surmised.

“Apparently not,” said Bond.

They were nearing the ground now, their capsule falling into the shadow of the Eye. Q realised that he couldn’t remember actually getting on it.

“How can we guarantee that Silva projects his secrets onto a specific computer?” said Q, “If we recreate his laptop – the one we have in our custody, anyway – what’s to say it won’t be a complete replica of the one in the real world? After all, if it’s meant to represent the same one, there’s no reason he would think it’d contain anything else other than what’s actually on it. Making this a pointless exercise.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” said Bond, as they came to a halt and the doors slid open, “This _is_ a pointless exercise.”

 

They left the London Eye and made their way across the river, back up towards Trafalgar Square. Q kept expecting the pedestrians and tourists to suddenly leap at them with scissors, but other than a few pointed stares and a gentleman who knocked into Bond as they crossed the street, they were left alone.

“Who knew you were so…mild,” said Bond, giving Q a sideways look as a black cab drew politely to a stop for the pedestrian crossing. “I’m flattered. We’ve been down here for over an hour and your projections haven’t tried to stab or shoot me yet.”

“Perhaps my subconscious simply doesn’t view you as a threat,” said Q loftily.

That earned him a smile, an amused twist to the mouth.

“Or maybe because you’re not doing unnatural and perverse things to art this time. How does that work, by the way? Is it simply a matter of concentration – you visualise something happening and it does?”

“More or less,” said James. “It’s harder to change things in a dream, easier to think about what you want and make sure it’s all there when you go under. Small details are easier than large ones.”

Bond shook out his cuffs and between one moment and the next, his cufflinks disappeared.

“Huh,” said Q, “Is it just the dreamer who can manipulate the dream or can anyone do it?”

“We used to dream up better weaponry for ourselves,” said Bond, “so I think to an extent you could. But the dreamer controls most of it.”

Q cast his mind about for something to alter, nothing dramatic so as not to upset his projections. The studied their fellow pedestrians, going about their business, all of them walking as if they knew exactly where they were going. A man passed them, holding a folded umbrella in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He had beautiful pea coat, with thick polished wooden buttons down the front. As they waited at the next intersection, Q studied his reflection in a nearby puddle and concentrated.

Bond made a noise of approval.

“Not bad,” he said, “You picked that up quick.”

Q did up the buttons of his new coat. It was a soft teal, rather than black, the woollen cuffs stiff and new.

Someone bumped into him with a hard elbow as they went past, making Q startle from his examination of his new pockets (they were empty save for a cloth bag of spare buttons. Clearly Q had literally given himself a new coat, straight off the rack.)

They made their way past Nelson’s Column and towards the fountains. Q watched it spray and splash; several of his projections were taking pictures of it, smiling at the camera. Two children were throwing pennies into the water, their laughter punctuating the sound of the water. Q dipped a hand in. The water was cold, like he expected, clinging to the back of his hand. It felt so real.

“Are you concentrating terribly hard?” asked Q, “The amount of sensory details are tremendous. I can’t tell the difference.”

“It’s easier to build from memory,” said Bond, surveying Q’s projections around them, “The more familiar you are with a place, the less effort.”

“Are there any limitations?” Q asked, “Do the usual laws of physics apply?”

“Does it matter?”

Q stared at Bond, incredulous.

“ _Of course it_ – it’s a dream! You could do anything, create anything: things that can’t exist in reality – “

“Then your mark immediately knows it’s a dream and you’re torn apart by projections,” Bond interrupted, “Pointless. ”

“I’m sure there are ways of manipulating dream scape to our advantage,” said Q, only half listening, “subtle enough not to alert projections. You just have no imagination.”

Bond’s expression shuttered closed, and the change was so startling that Q lost track of his thoughts for a minute because it felt like the air had gone cold in his lungs. Then the moment was gone and Bond was shrugging, dismissive.

“Haven’t needed much imagination,” he said, dry as bone, “The more real the dream, the more real the pain. The more effective the persuasion.”

Q studied the reflections in the fountain, the small puddles of shining foam, dirty from a thousand tourists. The details were really astounding, and there was no refuting that it was all very, very real – down to the reflection of the ugly blue cockerel in the water.

“Pain isn’t the issue with Silva,” he reminded Bond, “So perhaps neither is realism.”

Bond gave him a sideways look that spoke volumes in frustration. He pushed away from the fountain, and Q reluctantly followed him across the square and towards the steps leading up to the Gallery itself.

“It’s all the same with your type,” said Bond, suddenly.

Q raised an eyebrow in question.

“More interested in the theory and experimenting,” said Bond. “Remember what your subconscious did when I changed a painting? Imagine what Silva’s will do if we did anything remotely out of the ordinary.”

Looking at the projections around them – Q itched to talk to them but it felt too intimate, too private a thing to do within earshot of someone else – they seemed a lot calmer than the girl in the Sackler Room. Would they panic if the banners hanging out front of the gallery suddenly changed colours? Or would it take something more drastic, something so out of the ordinary as to be physically impossible? Did it have to be visible, or was it merely the fact it would alert Q himself to the unnaturalness of the reality around them? There were too many unanswered variables: an unjustifiable risk until Q was sure it was possible and necessary to change something.

Because the thrilling thought was, if Q was the dreamer, it was possible that whatever Silva hid digitally, Q could find. Encryption was like a safe door, after all – why go to the trouble of working out the combination if you could _dream it_ open?

“…the law of self fulfilling expectations,” he said to himself, watching a pigeon startle into the air, spraying breadcrumbs everywhere. “But you’re right.”

Bond raised both eyebrows.

“About?”

“Unnecessary risks,” said Q. “How long until the timer runs out?”

Bond glanced at his watch; a beautiful glossy thing that he probably owned in real life.

“About three minutes,” said Bond, “dream time.”

Staring at the watch, Q tried to imagine the weight of it, the feel of the metal and leather. A moment later, he shook out his cuffs, enjoying a shiver of satisfaction when an identical watch sat on his own wrist. He studied the hour and minute hands and the tiny diamonds beneath the glass.

“I wonder if it’ll fade out of existence if I forget about it,” said Q, running a thumb over the watch. He glanced up at Bond. “Do you know?”

“Does it matter?” said Bond, echoing Q’s own words, “If you expect it to be there, it will be as soon as you remember.”

Q grinned at that, teeth to lip – and received a smile in return, sardonic and dry.

 

 

As it turned out, waking was a lot more pleasant without being shot in the face. Q couldn’t remember _precisely_ how he woke; it was like trying to remember any other normal dream, water slipping through fingers. He could still see Bond’s visit Trafalgar Square, but the conversation seemed to dissolve into dregs until he was blinking awake in the fluorescent light MI6’s underground bunker.

“That was the full ten minutes,” said Tanner, making Q startle – he had forgotten they weren’t alone. He rubbed his eyes with the hand that wasn’t attached to the PASIV, and Tanner came into view. M was still in her chair, and Q straightened automatically out of the recline. Beside him, Bond didn’t bother sitting up.

“You didn’t kick out early,” Tanner went on, offering them a plastic glass of water each. “No one got shot then?”

Q shook his head.

“We were talking for about two hours,” he said, staring at the PASIV and doing the math in his head.

“Standard sedative,” said Tanner, tapping the edge of one of the vials. “One to Twelve ratio.”

Q dipped a finger into his glass. He watched the droplets roll off his skin, the water slightly cool but quickly warming to his hand. He thought of Bond’s Trafalgar and the fountain there. The water felt the same. Q studied his index finger, running the wet digit along the skin of his own thumb.

He stopped when he noticed Tanner watching him, eyes careful.

“How long until we’re reading for the extraction?” asked M, cutting straight to the point as was her style.

“He’s gone under twice,” said Bond, still lounging in his chair, “Hardly think we’re ready.”

“Well his projections didn’t kill you this time, did they, Quartermaster?”

“No, ma’am,” said Q, “though Double-Oh Seven did keep us isolated on the London Eye for a good hour.”

“We don’t even know if Q can hold a stable dream,” Bond added.

“Why is that necessary?” asked M, “You’ve done this before. Dream Silva into a cell with his computer and let the Quartermaster extract. There’s no need to teach him to build – no time, either.”

Q shook his head.

“Firstly, there’s no guarantee that Silva will project anything onto his computer. I’ll need to take a look at the reports but the mechanics of the process doesn’t seem very clear. We need to run trials. Preferably with a hostile subject. But I need more time.” He glanced at the PASIV, “More time to think.”

_Perhaps to build something._

M seemed to be dissecting him with her gaze, expressionless.

Whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find.

“I could go under on my own, if double-oh seven is required elsewhere,” said Q, doing his best to keep all inflections out of his voice. He must not have succeeded however, as Bond turned to look at him, sharp and shrewd.

“No,” said M, shortly, “He isn’t. I want an extraction before the hearing on Monday. Is that possible?”

“They couldn’t get a single soldier to pull it off,” said Bond, “So. Probably not.”

They exchanged a look across the top of the PASIV. Q adjusted his glasses.

“How fortuitous then,” he said, “that I am _not_ a soldier.”

 

 

This time Bond dreamt them to the top of the Scott Monument.

Q had never been to the real thing, but he had seen photographs. This was far more real, and it took his breath away to be effectively inside a memory. Dream sharing, for all its practical applications, was something terribly intimate.

“You really have something for heights, don’t you?” he said, going for unaffected and utterly failing. It was a windy day in Bond’s Edinburgh, and Q thought he could taste impending rain. Above them, birds cast tiny shadows onto the stone, flickering like mirages.

“It depends,” said Bond, leaning against one of the archways, “Do you still want to stab me with a pair of craft scissors?”

Q rolled his eyes.

“They were perfectly civil before.”

“Mhm,” said Bond, “I thought I’d be quieter up here. You said you wanted time to think.”

Q wrapped his hands around the iron railings, the metal cold and rough against his palm. The buildings stretched out below them, rough charcoal sketches with ink-spilled colour. On the ground, Q’s projections were miniature dolls, hurrying across the street. They weren’t all that high up, but it was still a beautiful view. It made Q feel unexpectedly happy for no reason at all, and he paused to study the shop fronts from above, resting his forehead against the railing, breathing in the wind. Almost immediately below them, a bike swerved to avoid a man walking his dog, and the alarmed cursing floating upwards on the wind. Q wanted to laugh – his projections didn’t have a Scottish accent.

Behind him, Bond didn’t seem to be concentrating at all – as if building Edinburgh down to the scratches in the stonework was as effortless breathing.

“You must have a very good memory,” said Q, contemplative.

There was pigeon poop on the railing and on the stone. He could hear someone playing the bagpipes too – and after walking along to the left and peering over the stone balcony, Q found him; a bagpipe player in kilt and coat on the corner of the road. He wondered if the bagpipe player was there because Bond remembered one or whether Q’s imaginary Scotland automatically came packaged with bagpipers on street corners. _Probably the latter_ , he thought ruefully.

“Very good memory, despite my old age,” said Bond, smirking. “Though the trick is not to try too hard. Things fall apart if you’re obsessing over missing details.”

Q realised, belatedly, that he wasn’t wearing the clothes he had been when they lay down for the third time. Instead of comfortable trousers and his cardigan, he was wearing a slate grey suit, a pale pinstriped shirt buttoned up to the nines – and the pea coat he had dreamt up on the walk from Southbank. Q turned to study Bond, who was still leaning against the stone arch. He wasn’t wearing a coat, just a suit and glossy leather shoes.

“My coat,” said Q, plucking at his own sleeves. He would have to look into getting this coat in reality; the wool felt amazing. The wind was scorching his hands and face, but the rest of him was wrapped warm. He wished absently for a pair of matching gloves, and stared at his bare hands until he blinked and they materialised.

“You’ve no fat on you,” said Bond, “Can’t have you freezing to death and waking up too early. Tanner will just think I shot you again.”

“Are these _solid gold buttons_?”

“I’m sorry, are they too distracting? Would you rather something from Primark?”

Q glared at him.

“You are terribly gaudy,” he said, but Bond only grinned. “How long did you live in Edinburgh? This is very vivid.”

Bond shrugged, but Q could read the pleased satisfaction in the line of his shoulders.

“Visited, never lived here. As you said, I have a good memory.”

Tearing his gaze away from the architecture, Q asked: “Will you be building the dream then? Draw the projections away from me while I hack Silva’s computer.”

Bond pushed away from the stone and came to stand beside Q, hands in pockets.

“If that’s what you need.”

Q frowned at the skyline, thinking hard.

“The issue is that we have no guarantee where Silva will project his secrets. It makes sense it would be encrypted, given his background. But we don’t know that. You said the researchers knew each other very well?”

Bond nodded.

“Two of them were engaged,” he said.

“And extraction didn’t work with any of the others?”

“Not without physical persuasion,” said Bond.

Q tilted his head.

“They hid objects for each other to find,” Bond elaborated, “and then got us to do it. That sort of worked, if our projections didn’t kill them first. But it was hit and miss. I think we are too paranoid to make an easy marks.”

“So it’s a matter of knowing the subject,” said Q, thinking out loud, “knowing where they would hide things and creating the right environment for it. Doesn’t matter how paranoid the projections are, if the right environment exists, the secrets will be there?”

Bond kept quiet, watching Q think and tap out a pattern with his gloved fingers against the stone.

“But we don’t know Silva well enough. Not even with what M has told us. And she hasn’t told us everything.”

“Of course not,” said Bond.

“He does seem fixated her. On what she did.”

“Are you surprised?” asked Bond.

Q held his gaze.

“Do you empathise?”

Bond didn’t look away, but his expression was carefully blank.

“I would have found a better way than cyanide.”

Q blinked, and the moment was broken. He took a deep breath, cool in his lungs, and exhaled. The sun was setting: the light slanting like spilled oil paint across the top of the buildings and the side of the monument. It warmed their faces with tea-orange stains and made Bond’s hair flaxen yellow.

Edinburgh stretched out in front of them, behind them, disappearing into mist and smog – and distantly, a drizzle of rain. It looked like it went on forever, right to the edges of awareness. Q wondered what would happen if they kept walking: would the dream keep going, building seamlessly onwards, faster than they could comprehend?

A thought struck him. If Silva did not trust physical safes – if his secrets were in ones and zeroes – all Q had to do was access at terminal. Perhaps all he had to do was create a secure set of servers, offline and bound in tight – and Silva’s secrets would spill in like code writing itself, inevitable as Edinburgh unfolding before their eyes.

It felt like someone had suddenly opened a window in Q’s head, and let in a gust of fresh air.

“Double-Oh seven,” he said, apropos to nothing, “What do you think of when I say elephants?”

Bond raised an eyebrow.

“…ivory.”

Q paused, momentarily derailed. He wrinkled his nose.

“No. _No_ ,” he said, waving a hand, “not those ridiculous psych evals. What do you think when I say elephant. What appears in your head?”

Bond’s other eyebrow went up.

“…an elephant,” he said, slowly.

“Right,” said Q, gesturing excitedly with his hands, “Precisely. So what will Silva be thinking of when you ask him about NATO?”

Bond folded his arms across his chest, huffing a breath of comprehension.

“ _Precisely_ ,” Q repeated, “Given the little we know, the only way to ensure he’s projection the right secrets somewhere is to prompt his subconscious. If we can create an appropriate server space it all, he should encrypt it and slide his secrets right in. Then I can go in and _decrypt_ it. But we have to limit the boundaries of the dream. Is that possible?” Q leaned close to the railings, face almost touching. “How far does this go? Can you end the city at a boundary? Can you delete everything except the Scott Monument?”

Bond frowned.

“Delete?”

Q waved a hand expansively through the bars of the railing.

“You know,” he said, “disappear it. Imagine it away. How else would we limit the scope of the dream? We don’t want to risk Silva projecting his secrets on a random laptop. Hard-drive. Et cetera. Too many options.”

Bond was still frowning, lines deep at the corners of his mouth.

“We could limit the dream to a building, inside,” he said, “If we don’t consciously create the rest it might work.”

“Could you get rid of Edinburgh now?” asked Q eagerly, “leaving just us and this tower?”

“I don’t know,” said Bond, hesitant.

“Try it,” said Q, “If you can then it’ll be easier to control all the variables in the dream.”

“You want me to delete Edinburgh,” said Bond, looking out over the city, Q’s projections still going about their business below their feet.

What did grey space look like, Q wondered.

Bond sighed.

“Alright. Give me a minute.”

Q waited, eyes flickering from Bond’s face and the streets below. The agent seemed to be staring at something half way to the horizon, his gaze sharp and focused. Then he closed his eyes, brows furrowed. For a long moment, absolutely nothing happened.

Then there was a deep, heavy throated rumbling. It reverberated in the air like a enormous bell being struck with a hammer, vibrating through the stone and Q’s very bones. Then, as Q watched, buildings in the distance seemed to crumple in on itself, collapsing in like lungs crushed in a giant fist – and as they fell closer, he saw that the ground was tearing itself apart, literally an earthquake swallowing up the road and the cars and the people running –

Then there was a series of almighty booms, as the nearest buildings collapsed. It was close enough that Q could hear the screaming and he gave a yell of alarm as the stones they were standing on shook with the blast. He grabbed Bond’s arm.

“Are you _blowing up the city?_ ” he shouted over the din of the noise, “Bond!”

Bond’s eyes were wide.

“What are you doing?” Q shouted, the wind howling in their ears as another building collapsed.

“You wanted me to delete – I’m deleting!” Bond shouted back.

“It’s still _there_ you haven’t – _oh jesus_.” He started as there was a loud bang somewhere near by – almost as if it was coming from within the tower itself. Q backed away from the door, edging along the balcony.

“It’s meant to go away,” Q clarified, waving his hands, “Not – not just blown up!”

“Well the concept of nothingness is a little hard to visualise,” said Bond, wrapping one arm around Q’s waist and hoisting them both up on to the stone ledge. Q had to clutch at the top of the iron railing to keep from overbalancing.

“What are you _doing?_ ” he protested, heart in his throat as Bond swung himself over the railing and onto the other side of the – oh _Christ_. The stone shook again, the rumbling louder, right beneath their skins. Q was holding onto the metal so tightly he had lost feeling in his fingers. Don’t look down, he thought frantically, don’t look down.

Bond’s jacket whipped in the wind, and he had a truly mad grin on his face. He held out a hand.

“Hurry up,” he said, “You’ll want to get on this side before your projections get here.”

“ _What?_ ” shouted Q, incredulous, “No!”

“I thought you didn’t like being shot,” said Bond.

“I don’t!” said Q, still hugging the railing. _Don’t look down. Don’t fucking look down_.

Bond unceremoniously grabbed his shoulder and pulled, almost tipping Q right over, head first. He flailed, forced into getting one leg over the horizontal beam.

“Oh god,” said (screamed) Q, “You’re utterly insane.”

“You need to see how a kick works anyway.”

“There’s gravity regardless of where we fall!” shouted Q. He would have waved his hands for emphasis but he was too busy hugging the railing. He kept his eyes firmly up, but felt the yawning pull of the space behind him, empty and vast and – oh gods.

Bond was still grinning.

“Falling is efficient, if you can get the height. You’ll either wake up from the kick, or wake up when you hit the ground.”

“You are _not_ helping!” said Q, crossly, desperately, panicked and weak-knead despite all the screaming logic and rationality in his head. It seemed that irrational fears did not become more rational here. After all, either way, it was literally in his head.

“Remember,” said Bond, “It’s just a dream.”

“I think I prefer the gun,” said Q.

“Close your eyes if you want,” said Bond.

“I _know_ I prefer the gun,” said Q. He tried to dream one up, but his mind was too preoccupied with _don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down oh bleeding bother I looked._

The door to the top most level of the monument burst open, admitting several very angry, very frightened projections.

“It’s just a dream,” said Bond, “ _Trust me.”_

And without any ceremony, he flung them both backwards into the air.

 

:i:

 

After James dismantled another dream by way of explosives _(“Can’t you start smaller? Instead of trying to destroy it.” – “It bloody creates itself! Anyway, size –”_ – _“Finish that sentence and I will not be responsible for my actions.”_ ), he and Q admitted temporary defeat in favour of food and liquids topside. That, and using the PASIV so intensely over the last two days made James’ head ache. He had a dull pulse of discomfort just behind the eyes, and he was secretly grateful for the reprieve.

The same couldn’t be said for Q, who was pouring over Project Somnacin reports spread over the metal work desk. His eyes kept flickering to the PASIV, fever bright.

James had seen that same look before. It never ended well.

Someone had brought them dinner, ramen in piping hot soup. James was still eating (away from the blue prints), whilst Q had scoffed his down in less than ten minutes and then promptly buried himself in the recently delivered files. He watched the new Quartermaster sketch something on a piece of graphing paper, frown at it intensely, before tossing it onto the floor and folding over a fresh sheet.

“You said you’ve never reached the boundaries of a dream before,” said Q, not looking up from the papers in front of him.

James finished chewing.

“Never,” he agreed, “Though whether that’s due to the structure of the dream or the fact that we inevitably got killed…” he shrugged.

“According to this,” said Q, a finger holding his place on a page of tiny font, “one self-generates the dream constantly whilst under. Which means, theoretically there are no boundaries. Only whatever physical limits the dreamer builds into the architecture.”

Q chewed his bottom lip for a few long moments, fingers twitching against the page he was holding. James wondered if Q was missing the keyboard. For security reasons, Project Somnacin went completely offline once disbanded, resulting in the stacks of papers and folders in front of them. Of course, considering they had apparently lost one of the PASIVs along with a slew of schematics…

“Perhaps it explains why you seem only able to blow things up. It makes sense, psychologically speaking – we’re unable to render pure nothingness because we have no reference for it. Though perhaps a giant chasm or cliff might do the job just as well. But we’ve tried that.”

It was a startling sense of déjà vu. In many ways, Q was precisely like the researchers on Project Somnacin; full of hypotheticals and possibilities. The difference was his single-minded focus, willingness to shed possibility for practicality, and most of all, surprising deference to James’ opinion. That and the fact Q was absorbing three years worth of experimentation in a few scant hours; the threat of exposed names and exposed lives hanging above their heads. James suspected that even if this Quartermaster had risen to his title in different circumstances, M might have had good reason not to appraise him of Project Somnacin at all.

Finally, Q looked up, studying James with a slight tilt to the head.

“That last dream. Why couldn’t you dream up that cliff?”

James set his almost empty bowl down.

“Because _giant cliffs_ don’t exist on the south bank,” he said. He had tried to visualise it into being (much to the distress of Q’s projections). It hadn’t ended well for any of the parties involved.

“Yes,” said Q, pinching the bridge of his nose, “But it’s a dream – where existence is much easier than non-existence.”

“You saw what happened when I tried to put a cliff in,” said James. He really needed a drink. That was the worst thing about Somnacin – it didn’t mix too well with inebriation. “Most of the buildings just collapsed. And kept collapsing. Imaginary things are unstable.”

“It’s only unstable because you keep _thinking_ that it shouldn’t exist,” Q insisted, fingers tapping out a machine gun rhythm on the plastic sleeve at his elbow, “the initial trials said that once a dreamer became aware of the nature of their reality, that was when things started falling apart for most of the recruits. Once they became aware of the dream, they were conscious of the unreality of it, thereby rendering it unreal. And that’s why you couldn’t run the simulations yourselves. They kept collapsing – someone else had to be the dreamer. Someone who could keep it stable.”

Q was still staring at James.

“But you can do it. Building from memory keeps it stable, doesn’t it? And why you can change details but not the overall structure. Do you fool yourself into thinking it’s reality? How does it work?”

“If you dwell on it too much, it tends to fall apart,” said James. “So the idea is not to think about it.”

Q shook his head.

“No, there must be a way to create something completely imaginary and keep it stable at the same time.”

“Not _completely_ imaginary,” James countered, “When we ran the simulations, it was recognisable. Buildings from real compounds and such. Mashed together or made bigger, but always recognisable.”

“But why couldn’t you do that before? You could have put the portico in Eastbourne or something.”

James passed a hand over his face.

“I don’t know,” he said, flatly.

Q leaned back in his chair. He rubbed absently at the cotton swab taped to the inside of his arm; a small dark spot of blood where the IV had been. There was an identical one taped to James’ own arm.

“Perhaps I will need to be the dreamer, after all,” said Q, “There has to be a way of limiting the boundaries, otherwise we have no idea what Silva or his projections will do.” He made a frustrated noise. “We need more _time_.”

“Why don’t we run this twice?” asked James, “We might not need…imaginary cliffs. If the scope is too wide, and we can’t catch Silva, we kick out and try again. Rinse, repeat.”

But Q was shaking his head.

“No. If Silva is as experienced as you say, getting him to project his secrets will be hard enough. I think the whole thing depends on him being unaware of the precise nature of what we’re doing.”

“Alright. What do you suggest?”

Q closed his eyes, eyebrows furrowed as he rested his head against his fingers.

“You should run an interrogation like you normally do,” he said after a long minute of silence, “I daresay he would expect as much. It’ll provide an opportunity for you to ask all the right questions – and theoretically, get him thinking about whatever he’s not telling us.”

“Sounds simple enough.”

“Yes,” said Q, “ _If_ the subject projects their secrets. You’re right. They never perfected it – finding objects isn’t enough for our purposes. What’s more, the studies were far too oriented around _ad hoc_ secure environments. We don’t actually know what makes someone project secrets in a certain way or place. We need to know whether a secure environment depends purely on familiar specifics, actual security, perceived security or a combination.”

“I thought you said Silva would encrypt it himself,” said James.

Q opened his eyes.

“Because I think it’s perceived security,” he said, “As long as I provide a suitable digital space, his subconscious should do the rest. But I need to know that he would project there in the first place, or…” Q waved a hand, wrist turning in a half circle, “if we require more a more specific place. Emotional attachment. Or need to physically limit the dream so as to keep his subconscious where we want it.”

“Subconscious as in projections?” asked James, leaning forwards.

“And everything else he’s not saying,” said Q, pushing his glasses back up his nose with one finger.

“And how do we find out?”

“Test run,” said Q, pushing back his chair and making his way to the two law chairs and the PASIV that lay on the table between them. Holding back a sigh, James loosened the tie around his neck and followed.

“Don’t you think we should see if you can hold a stable dream first?” said Bond, “My projections aren’t exactly all that friendly.”

Q raised his eyebrows.

“I’d think that was the whole point. But who said I was extracting from you?”

It was James’ turn to raise his eyebrows, startled into genuine surprise.

“Well you’re extracting Silva,” he said, gesturing to the door, “And didn’t you decide that I lacked sufficient imagination for the dreaming?”

Q’s lip twitched upwards in a smile; no teeth but plenty of amusement.

“If subconscious projecting doesn’t work, we’ll have to rethink the entire approach. More efficient if we test that hypothesis first – may not be necessary for me to learn to build a dream, and we don’t have time to waste if that is the case.”

Unravelling a clean IV lines from the machine, James found himself again re-evaluating the new Quartermaster. No one gave their secrets so freely. Indeed, no one in the business gave their secrets at gun point either; information was stolen through blood and screams and bullets lodged between bone and sinew. It was rather disorienting for it to be offered, even in the name of Queen and Country. But then again, James supposed, Q wouldn’t have earned the letter this young if he hadn’t been the exact kind of person that _would_ offer. Perhaps he didn’t know what he was offering.

Q held his gaze for a moment, before focusing on his own IV, pushing his right sleeve up his arm.

“Confident, are we?” said James. _You shouldn’t trust. You don’t know me._

Q blinked, slow and deliberate.

“Hardly,” he said, “Just prudent. And of all the available extractors that could run this trial, you pose the least risk to me.”

“Oh really,” said James with a snort, smiling despite himself. _God, this boy._ “And why’s that?”

 “You’re the least likely to use whatever you found against me,” said Q, simply.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said James.

“Your psych evaluations say otherwise,” said Q. His smile widened, making his eyes curve and his face lose five years that it couldn’t afford to lose, “I doubt you’d be able to get past my encryptions anyway.”

“Touché,” said James, sliding the IV in beneath skin and watching Q do the same. “So do I tell you to think of elephants now, or when we’re under?”

“Silva will already know what we are roughly after, so now won’t hurt. But don’t tell me where we’ll be. We won’t risk biasing my subconscious; see if it projects what you’re after.”

James cocked his head. Q set the timer for ten minutes, fingers moving as if he had been doing this for a lifetime, clever and sure.

“And what is it that I’m after?”

Q was still smiling; a quirk just the wrong side of cocky.

“My name.”

 

:i:

 

James dreamt them into the middle of Piccadilly.

It was pouring with rain, the pavement soaked like a mirror as Q’s projections hurried by and cabs were desperately flagged down. The lights from the shop windows were reflected back up, glistening in the broad pavement tiles, candle yellow. James promptly dreamt up a large black umbrella, but even then he could feel rain dripping down the back of his shirt and his hair damp against his skull. He peered down the street. It was about three in the afternoon, but dark with clouds.

“Bloody hell,” came Q’s voice from behind James’ shoulder as he ducked beneath the rim the umbrella. “can’t you dream the rain away or something?”

“You look like a drowned cat,” said James, amused. The Quartermaster was soaked, hair mostly plastered to his head except where it stuck up at the front. His glasses were speckled with water, and his pea coat was a shade darker with the rain, collar flipped up against the wind. His knuckles were pink where they clasped the edges of his sleeves.

“This is not going to endear you to my subconscious, I assure you,” said Q darkly, but followed without further complaint when James led them down the street. They ducked momentarily beneath a construction scaffold before emerging on the other side, splashing past a dip in the ground and an unsavoury puddle. Pigeons huddled under the overhang, and people bumped into each-other on the way to the nearest Tube entrance.

“Where are we going?” asked Q.

He was huddled close for the shelter of the umbrella, and James could feel the warmth of his presence all along his left side from shoulder to ankle.

Angling his shoulders, James directed them across the road (Q cursing as he stepped in water). Lowering the umbrella and snapping it closed, they made a dash for the wooden doors, which James held open for the both of them. Inside, it was blissfully dry. A few waterlogged projections stood morosely near the shop doors, pretending to be browsing the books nearest the windows while glancing impatiently at their watches and the rain outside.

Q had stopped just inside the door, shoulders tense.

“Anything wrong?” asked James, keeping his voice casual.

“How did you know?” said Q, letting the door swing closed as he came further into the book shop. His eyes darted from his own projections, to James, then back again.

James tilted his head.

“Quite a few of your projections have been carrying Hatchards’ bags,” he said, “Favourite book store?”

“…one of,” said Q vaguely, still staring around him. Perhaps he was cataloguing all the details that James had missed or built wrongly. If so, the projections around them didn’t seem overly distressed. The boy behind the counter gave James a searching look when he passed, but was otherwise blandly unobtrusive.

Q picked up one of the books from a display next to James, just in front of the broad wooden counter. It was a green paperback and there was a neat stack of them sitting beneath a friendly paper sign that proclaimed them _Best Sellers of the Week!_ Q the copy around so James could read the cover. In tidy black san serif, the title read: _‘Superposition: Unresolved interpretations of PASIV technology. Reports 31-38.’_

“Somehow I doubt Hatchards would stock this,” said Q, dryly. “But it does clear up who is projecting.”

“How presumptuous of you,” said James. He shrugged off his damp suit jacket before the heating in the store stick it to his shirt.

Q quirked an eyebrow, but did not reply, merely turning away to put the book back in its display.

James couldn’t remember precisely when he had been into this particular bookstore, but he had been here before, briefly. He had constructed it from what he could see in his minds eye, extrapolating the ground floor onto the rest of the building that he knew went up five floors. It must have been convincing enough not to startle the projections outright – a wooden staircase rotating upwards in neat rectangles through the middle of the store; surrounded by floor to ceiling bookshelves of the same wood, filled with books. Tables took up the remaining floor space, with slow stacks of volumes displayed.

James picked up a long glossy hardback from a shelf. The cover featured a photograph of a painting that James didn’t know, but inside the pages became blank from about four pages in, a curious wash of indistinct colour and _lorem ipsums_.

Two tables over, Q was running one hand over the spines of a few leather bounds, head tilted.

Leaving him to browse the contents of his own subconscious, James made his way slowly upstairs. He knew that if Q was here, it was likely his subconscious would project to spaces most closely available. If his own name was the subject of this entire exercise, it wasn’t farfetched to assume that it would be here somewhere, hidden in the bookstore, somewhere in between the thousands upon thousands of pages.

_Security through obscurity._

The problem was…where _would_ it be?

James peered upwards, one hand on the staircase. Bookshelves seemed to tessellate, disappearing in a tidy spiral of converging lines. Every shelf was packed with books, some glossy, other leather. Some had their front covers angled so you could see it, some were wrapped in cling-film. Others were visible only by their spines, endless rows of them. As James climbed another level, the number of projections lessened. There were one or two dotted in front of the shelves, browsing – but it was very quiet.

James began scanning the shelves, methodically working his way clockwise around the room and into the next adjoining chamber. The books seemed to be arranged in what he presumed the real Hatchards was arranged; via topic and listed by author. It soon became very clear with which sections Q was most familiar (and perhaps frequented most often). The cooking section possessed the most generic of titles, and when James pulled a book out at random, the pages were filled with vague photographs, most out of focus; words a mix of gobbledegook and random letters that ran into plain white pages. Q had a lot more interest for the fine arts, but his attentions seemed largely focused on certain pockets of history, leaving entire geographical areas and time periods blank and awash with post-card prints of paintings and sculptures.

He paused, spotting a familiar painting on the cover of a large coffee-table book. James couldn’t help but smile when he took it off the shelf. It was a production of the _The_ _Fighting Temeraire,_ and when he flipped to the appropriate chapter, the subtitle read: _A bloody big ship._

In his periphery, James saw Q approach, having evidently followed James upstairs. His expression seemed carefully blank, chin tilted.

“It’s embarrassing how many books have that Turner as the cover,” said Q conversationally, spotting the volume in James’ hands as he replaced it on the shelf. “Though I suppose my subconscious associates how it likes.”

“Quite,” said James.

Q was looking a lot drier than he had been twenty minutes earlier, and he gave James what was clearly meant to be a dispassionate stare.

“Any luck so far, 007?”

“Not yet,” said James, still scanning the book titles. Q had a predilection for Escher and experimental architecture, but not so much for interior designing. He wondered if he’d find a whole new section on computers upstairs.

Ignoring Q, James continued his systematic examination of the books, making his way further and further upstairs. Q didn’t follow immediately, simply watched him with an inexplicable expression, one hand stroking the smooth wood of the banisters absently.

James knew that in theory, one could not control what their subconscious did – which included the nature and method of their projections, be they people or words on a page. There were books filled entirely with numbers and symbols, arranged wholly in a way that James could not understand. Others were filled with conversations, pictures from CCTV cameras or simply strange generic half written paragraphs about their contents.

James began looking for books which were less out of focus; books which had pages and pages upon words printed, details as sharp as any in real life. He climbed another level, past an entire shelf of lovingly detailed science fiction which took him the longest to trawl through, flicking through the pages and covers and dedication in search of a clue, any clue, a last name, a pattern in authors. He did the same for post-war British painters, and then again for three rows of books on security systems.

Growing slightly frustrated, James took a turn from the main room and into a smaller section of the bookstore, drawn by the way every single spine had an individual name etched.

It took a moment for him to realise that this section of the bookstore was dedicated to children’s story books; with bright painted covers and pastel illustrations. There was a long Victorian couch near the window, and though the glass was still dotted with water, the rain seemed to have stopped for the moment.

Footsteps muffled by the thick carpet, James made his way to the window and surveyed scene outside. Below on the street, Umbrellas marked the hurrying projections, still calm (strangely, oddly so). No one was shooting yet, but James knew it wouldn’t do to linger for much longer. He watched as a cab pulled to the curb in a slight spray of water, lights blinking as it idled.

He was about to turn away, to continue his search, when a figure emerged from the cab, pausing to hand over the fare before shutting the door. She was wearing a wine red dress; sleeveless despite the weather.

James stood, frozen by the window, blood gone dull and cold.

He watched as Vesper returned a wallet to her bag, before looking deliberately up.

Their gaze met, and she smiled.

James could do nothing as she looked away, adjusting her hair. Turned, walking down the street towards Hatchards, dress swirling about her knees.

Tearing himself from the glass, James found himself clutching his Walther, his own breathing gone flat, heart hammering. Something tangible and sharp ached just below his second rib, like someone had slid a knife there small and innocuous until you twisted, scraping it hard against bone and blood.

_He had to concentrate._

Suddenly, everything seemed sharper; the colours and the smell of the thick paper. Entire rows of illustrated books in French; a lion in London, little figures in rough sketchy lines. Children nursery rhymes picked out in glittery print, _four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie._ James shut the book and kept going, eyes raking over the row upon rows, stack upon stack. Without knowing anything specific about Q’s childhood, it was difficult to choose at random, unless…

Abandoning his systematic search, James began looking for tell-tell marks of wear and tear; the books with dog-eared pages that didn’t belong in a bookshop. Making his way to the opposite end of the room, he began noticing books that were sitting, odd one out amongst glossy others – as if a child had taken it down from the shelf to read and hastily returned it.

Taking a few steps back, James surveyed the back-shelf and noticed that whilst most books had been arranged with their kind, the lower the shelves, the more likely one would find a misplaced book. They broke up the tidy uniform line that could be traced by the top edge of each book. The misplaced ones would usually be shorter or taller, sticking out like a typewriter that was missing teeth.

There almost seemed to a be a pattern to the –

James stared. He felt an uncharacteristic urge to laugh, because broken by the shelf partitions, the misplaced books came consistently between two and three rows of unbroken collections. Dreaming up a spare piece of paper and pen, James quickly drew the pattern out across the page, marking off the misplaced books with dots. Then beneath each dot, he wrote a ‘1’, and beneath each line he wrote a ‘0’.

“Q,” he said to himself, because that was what it spelled and that was what it was and it was both brilliant and frightening how exposed the mind was, how given a space of comfort secrets were so easily divulged, so willingly given.

Walking right up to the back shelf, James crouched down. He pulled one of the misplaced books from where it had been slotted, almost hidden by the larger books beside it. It was a well read copy; edges slightly feathered, the illustration perhaps a bit paler than it should have been. He flipped it over, and found no price tag on it. There was a little rabbit drawn on the front, and all in all it was barely larger than the palm of James’ hand. It was eggshell blue, and the title picked out in the same colour on white.

_The Tale of Peter Rabbit._

James opened the book.

And there, on the first page, was a name written in the careful, clumsy hand of a toddler.

 

:i:

 

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic was meant to be a "short two parter". And now the first chapter is nearly 20K and there's a solid 4 more planned. Hopefully the next chapter won't be quite as long - if you have crit re pacing/unnecessary details please do let me know, or any comments at all! <3 
> 
> *falls down*
> 
> To see the awesome sketches for this chapter, **[please visit bjo's tumblr.](http://bjodoodles.tumblr.com)** And feel free to **[drop me a line on tumblr](http://fishwrites.tumblr.com)** if you're keen on fic previews and outtakes!!! :D or if you just want to squee about 00q. seriously.


End file.
